Predator's Gold (2 page)

Below them to the south, the east and west, the Frost Barrens stretched away into the haze; cold, stony country where the Ice Gods ruled for eight months of the year, and where patches of snow already lay in the shady bottoms of the criss-cross town-tracks. Northwards rose the black basalt wall of the Tannhäuser Mountains, the chain of volcanoes which marked the northernmost limit of the Great Hunting Ground. Several were erupting, their plumes of grey smoke like pillars holding up the sky. Between them, faint behind a veil of ash, Hester and Tom could just make out the world-wide white of the Ice Wastes, and something moving there, vast, dirty and implacable, like a mountain gone rogue.

Hester pulled a telescope from one of the pockets of her coat and put it to her eye, twizzling the focusing ring until the blurry view came suddenly sharp. She was looking at a city: eight tiers of factories and slave-barracks and smut-spewing chimneys, a sky-train riding the slipstream, parasite airships sifting the exhaust plume for waste minerals, and down below, ghostly through veils of snow and powdered rock, the big wheels rolling.

“Arkangel!”

Tom took the telescope from her. “You’re right. It keeps to the northern foothills of the Tannhäusers in summer, eating up scavenger towns as they come through the passes. The polar ice cap is much thicker now than it was in olden days, but there are still parts that are too thin to take Arkangel’s weight till summer’s end.” Hester laughed. “Know-all.”

“I can’t help it,” Tom said. “I was an Apprentice Historian, remember? We had to memorize a list of the World’s Great Traction Cities, and Arkangel was right near the top, so I’m not likely to forget it.”

“Show off,” grumbled Hester. “I wish it had been Zimbra, or Xanne-Sandansky. You wouldn’t look so clever then.”

Tom was peering through the telescope again. “Any day now it’ll lift up its tracks and lower its iron runners and go skating off in search of ice cities and Snowmad scavenger towns to gobble up…”

For the present, however, Arkangel seemed content to trade. It was too vast to haul itself through the narrow passes of the Tannhäusers, but airships were lifting from its harbours and flying south through the haze towards Airhaven. The first of them cut an arrogant swathe through the swirl of balloons around the floating town and swooped in to dock at strut six, just below Tom and Hester’s perch; they felt the faint vibration as its docking-clamps gripped the quay. It was a lean, short-range attack ship with a red wolf painted on its sable envelope and its name underneath in gothic script: the Clear Air Turbulence.

Men swaggered out of the armoured gondola, stomping along the quay and up the stairways which led to the High Street. Big, burly men with fur cloaks and fur hats and a chilly glitter of chain-mail under their tunics. One wore a steel helmet from which sprouted two huge, flaring gramophone horns. A flex led from the helmet to a brass microphone, clamped in the fist of another man, whose amplified voice boomed out across Airhaven as he climbed the stairs.

“Greetings, airlings! From Great Arkangel, Hammer of the High Ice, Scourge of the North, Devourer of the Spitzbergen Static, greetings! We have gold to exchange for anything you can tell us about the locations of ice cities! Thirty sovereigns for information leading to a capture!”

He started to push his way between the Crumple Zone’s tables, still booming out his offer, while all about him aviators shook their heads and made sour faces and turned away. Now that prey was in such short supply everywhere several of the big predators had begun to offer finder’s fees, but few did it this openly. Honest air-traders were starting to fear that they might soon be barred altogether from the smaller ice cities, for what mayor would risk giving docking permits to a ship that might fly off next day and sell his course to a greedy great urbivore like Arkangel?

Yet there were always others, smugglers and demi-pirates and merchants whose ships were not bringing in the profits they had hoped for, who were ready to accept predator’s gold.

“Come and find me at the Gasbag and Gondola if you have traded this summer aboard Kivitoo or Breidhavik or Anchorage and know where they plan to over-winter!” urged the newcomer. He was a young man, and he looked stupid and rich and well-fed. “Thirty in gold, my friends; enough to keep your ships in fuel and luftgaz for a year…”

“That is Piotr Masgard,” Hester heard a Dinka aviatrix at a neighbouring table tell her friends. “He’s the youngest son of the Direktor of Arkangel. Calls that gang of his the Huntsmen. They don’t just advertise for snoops; I’ve heard they land that ship of theirs on peaceful little cities too fast for Arkangel to catch and force them to stop, or turn round – force them at sword-point to steer straight into Arkangel’s jaws!”

“But that’s not fair!” cried Tom, who had also been listening, and unluckily his words fell loudly into a momentary gap in Masgard’s speech. The Huntsman swung round, and his big, lazy, handsome face grinned down at Tom.

“Not fair, airling? What’s not fair? This is a town-eat-town world, you know.” Hester tensed. One thing she could never understand about Tom was why he always expected everything to be fair. She supposed it was his upbringing. A few years living by his wits in a scavenger-ville would have knocked it out of him, but he’d grown up with al the rules and customs of the Guild of Historians to keep real life at bay and, despite all he’d seen since, he could still be shocked by people like Masgard.

“I just mean, it’s against all the rules of Municipal Darwinism,” Tom explained, looking up at the big man. He got to his feet, but found that he was still looking up, for the towering Huntsman was at least a foot taller. “Fast cities eat slow ones, and strong cities eat weak ones. That’s the way it’s meant to work, just like in nature.

Offering finder’s fees and hijacking prey upsets the balance,” he went on, as though Masgard was just an opponent at the Apprentice Historians’ Debating Society.

Masgard’s grin grew broader. He flicked his fur cloak aside and drew his sword.

There were gasps and cries and a clatter of falling chairs as everyone in the vicinity tried to get as far back as possible. Hester grabbed hold of Tom and began pulling him away, always keeping her eye on that gleaming blade. “Tom, you idiot, leave it!” Masgard stared at her a moment, then let out a roaring laugh and sheathed his sword. “Look! The airling has a pretty girlie to keep him from harm!” His crew laughed with him, and Hester blushed patchily and tugged up her old red scarf to hide her face.

“Come and find me later, girl!” Masgard shouted. “I’m always at home to a pretty lady! And remember, if you have a city’s course to tell me of, I’ll give you thirty in gold! You can buy yourself a new nose!”

“I’l remember,” promised Hester, pushing Tom quickly away. Anger flapped inside her like a trapped crow. She wanted to turn and fight. She was willing to bet Masgard didn’t know how to use that sword he was so proud of… But the dark, murderous, revengeful part of her was something she tried to keep hidden these days, so she contented herself with slipping out her knife and quietly severing the lead of Masgard’s microphone as she passed. The next time he tried to make an announcement the laughter would be directed at him.

“Sorry,” Tom said bashfully, as they hurried down to the docking ring, which was crowded now with traders and sightseers fresh in from Arkangel. “I didn’t mean – I just thought –”

“It’s all right,” said Hester. She wanted to tell him that if he didn’t do brave, foolish things like that from time to time he wouldn’t be Tom, and she might not love him so. But she couldn’t put all that into words, so she pushed him into the space under a tier-support and, after making sure that nobody was looking, wrapped her skinny arms around his neck and pulled her veil down and kissed him. “Let’s leave.”

“But we don’t have a cargo yet. We were going to look for a fur-trader or—”

“There are no fur-traders here, only Old-Tech, and we don’t want to start carrying that sort of stuff, do we?” He looked uncertain, so she kissed him again before he could say anything. “I’m tired of Airhaven. I want to be back on the Bird Roads.”

“All right,” said Tom. He smiled, stroking her mouth, her cheek, the kink in her eyebrow where the scar cut through. “All right. We’ve seen enough of northern skies. Let’s go.”

But it was not to be so simple. When they reached strut seventeen there was a man waiting beside the Jenny Haniver, sitting on a big leather pack. Hester, still smarting a little from Masgard’s mockery, hid her face again. Tom let go her hand and hurried to meet the stranger.

“Good day!” cried the man, standing up. “Mr Natsworthy? Miss Shaw? I gather you are the owners of this splendid little ship? Golly, they told me at the harbour office you were young, but I didn’t realize quite how young! You’re barely more than children!”

“I’m almost eighteen,” said Tom defensively.

“Never mind, never mind!” beamed the stranger. “Age makes no difference if the heart is great, and I’m sure you have a great heart. ‘Who’s that handsome young chap?’ I asked my friend the harbour master, and he told me, ‘That’s Tom Natsworthy, pilot of the Jenny Haniver.’ ‘Pennyroyal,’ I said to myself, ‘that young man may be just the fellow you’re looking for!’ So here I am!” Here he was. He was a smallish man, balding and slightly overweight, and he wore a trim white beard. His clothes were the typical outfit of a northern scavenger – a long fur coat, a tunic with many pockets, thick breeches and fur-lined boots – but they looked too expensive, as if they been run up for him by a fashionable tailor as a costume for a play set in the Ice Wastes.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well what?” asked Hester, who had taken an instant dislike to this posturing stranger.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Tom, much more politely. “We don’t really understand what you want…”

“Oh, I do apologize, I beg your pardon,” the stranger babbled. “Permit me to elucidate! My name is Pennyroyal; Nimrod Beauregard Pennyroyal. I have been exploring a little among these great horrible towering fire-mountains, and now I am on my way home. I should like to book passage aboard your charming airship.”

3

THE PASSENGER

Pennyroyal was a name that rang a bell with Tom, although he could not think why.

He was sure he’d heard it mentioned in a lecture, back in his days as an Apprentice Historian – but what Pennyroyal had done, or said, to make him worth lecturing about, he did not recall; he had spent too much time daydreaming to pay much attention to his teachers.

“We don’t carry passengers,” said Hester firmly. “We’re bound for the south, and we travel alone.”

“The south would be just fine and dandy!” beamed Pennyroyal. “My home city is the raft resort of Brighton, and it is cruising in the Middle Sea this autumn. I am eager to be home quickly, Miss Shaw. My publishers, Fewmet and Spraint, are desperate to have a new book from me by Moon Festival, and I need the peace and quiet of my own study to begin working up my notes.”

As he spoke, he glanced quickly over his shoulder, scanning the faces of the people on the docking ring. He was sweating slightly, and Hester thought he looked not so much eager to be home as downright shifty. But Tom was hooked. “You are a writer, Mr Pennyroyal?”

“Professor Pennyroyal,” beamed the man, correcting him very kindly. “I am an Explorer, Adventurer and Alternative Historian. Maybe you’ve come across my works: Lost Cities of the Sands, perhaps, or America the Beautiful – the Truth about the Dead Continent…”

Now Tom remembered where he had heard that name before. Chudleigh Pomeroy had once mentioned Nimrod B. Pennyroyal in a lecture about Recent Trends in History. Pennyroyal (the old Historian had said) had no respect for true historical research at all. His daring expeditions were mere stunts, and he filled his books with wild theories and lurid tales of romance and adventure. Tom was rather fond of wild theories and lurid tales, and he had looked for Pennyroyal’s works in the Museum Library afterwards, but the stuffy Guild of Historians had refused to allow them shelf-space there, so he never did find out where Pennyroyal’s expeditions had taken him.

He glanced at Hester. “We do have room for a passenger, Het. And we could use the money…”

Hester scowled.

“Oh, money is no object,” promised Pennyroyal, pulling out a plump purse and jangling it. “Let’s say, five sovereigns now and five more when we dock at Brighton?

It’s not as sweet a deal as Piotr Masgard would offer you for betraying some poor city, but it’s pretty good, and you will be doing a great service to literature.” Hester stared at a coil of hawser on the quay. She knew she had lost. This too-friendly stranger knew just how to appeal to Tom, and even she had to admit that ten sovereigns would come in handy. She made one last effort to fend off the inevitable, booting Pennyroyal’s pack and asking, “What’s in your baggage? We don’t carry Old-Tech. Seen a bit too much of what it can do.”

“Heavens,” cried Pennyroyal, “I couldn’t agree more! I may be Alternative, but I’m not an idiot. I, too, have seen what happens to people who spend their lives digging up old machines. They end up poisoned by weird radiation or blown up by malfunctioning widgets. No, all I carry is a change of undies and a few thousand pages of notes and drawings for my new book, Fire Mountains – Natural Phenomenon or Ancient Blunder?”

Hester kicked the pack again. It fell slowly over on to its side, but it didn’t let out any metallic noises to suggest that Pennyroyal was lying. She looked down at her feet, then down again, through the perforated deckplates of Airhaven to the earth, where a town was creeping slowly westward, dragging its long shadow behind it. Oh well, she thought. The Middle Sea would be warm and blue, a far cry from these dismal Barrens, and it should only take a week to get there. Surely she could bear to share Tom with Professor Pennyroyal for a week? She would have him to herself for the rest of their lives.